


peccavi, flagellor, ignoscar

by orphan_account



Category: Vikings (TV)
Genre: F/M, Light Bondage, M/M, Oral Sex, Religious Content, Self-Harm, Whipping, flagellation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-25
Updated: 2013-03-25
Packaged: 2017-12-06 20:23:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/739740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the kink meme, for the prompt "Athelstan is a flagellant. Ragnar and Lagertha are horrified/confused/turned on?"</p>
<p>Athelstan is determined, Lagertha even more so, and Ragnar's along for the ride.</p>
            </blockquote>





	peccavi, flagellor, ignoscar

The first time Lagertha walked in on him, she strode up to his frozen body and took the whip from his hand like a mother snatching a knife from her child’s grasp. “No,” she said, and tapped him on the head with it, and left him. He didn’t look her in the face during dinner and she didn’t mention it, but in the middle of the night she got up from her bed and made him stand with his hands against the wall so she could stick bandages on the weeping stripes. He wanted to tell her not to bother, and did, but she slapped him on the shoulder, smearing crushed herbs on his skin in the process. “I won’t have you dying of infection, priest.” 

The cloth itched against his back.

The second time, she came in just as he was shrugging his robes down; she dropped the pail she had been carrying and ran over to snap the whip from his hand. “What did I tell you?” 

“I have to do this.”

“Oh no you don’t,” she snarled, oddly fierce. 

“I’m a slave,” he tried. “Maybe you should be doing this to me.”

She laughed – laughed! – at that, and cuffed him round the head, like she would cuff Ragnar when he put his feet on the table, but her eyes were still harsh and she twisted his hair in her fingers. “If you are a slave, your body is mine to do with as I will. I would you would not hurt yourself.” She leaned in. “ _Understand_?”

There was no third time. Every scrap of leather he might have stolen suddenly disappeared. Lagertha stalked around the house, eying him suspiciously. Two weeks after the first time she had him with his hands against the wall again so she could peel the bandages from where his back had bled. She made him sit in the yard that night, naked and shivering, and sloshed him with warm water. The scabs did not break. She pushed her thumbnail against the new red skin and proclaimed him healed.

“Now,” she said, “don’t do it again.”

“You don’t know what I’m doing,” he said, petulant. He crossed his arms over his bent-to-the-chest knees. Being naked in front of Lagertha felt better than Lagertha being naked in front of him, but it still bothered him and he longed for his robes.

She sat down in front of him. Her eyes were glossy in the starlight and she had flowers in her hair.

“Our priests,” she said, “they go to the woods and starve themselves. They drink things that make them piss blood and eat things that make them see the gods, and yes, they beat each other. And then the gods rape their minds, and they go _insane_. I saw a man turn into a shell of himself for the sake of talking to the gods. I know _exactly_ what you’re doing, priest. I don’t want you doing it.”

“My god would never treat me so harshly.”

“Then why’s he making you maim yourself?” Lagertha gave him a light slap on the cheek and pulled them both to their feet. “Find another way to talk to him." 

Athelstan lay on his pallet (on his back, for the first time in a while) and thought about how wrong she was. God always talked to him; he did not need potions, or to piss blood. These poor pagans, that they must use magic to converse with their demons. He thought about his sins, about how he prayed each time before picking up the lash and rocking into its bite. _Absolve me pater quia peccavi_. He dug his nails into his palm. The blood on his fingers made him feel better and he fell asleep.

The next day, Lagertha saw him nursing his hand.

The next night, Lagertha pulled him from his pallet. She had a length of rope and she made him press his palms together before she bound his wrists, scrubbed his palms with herbs before she bound his hands. As an afterthought she trussed together his ankles. She sat on his chest like a succubus and pulled his head up by the hair.

“This will happen _every night,_ ” she said. “Understand, priest? _Stop it._ ”

“Lagertha,” Ragnar called, sleep-voiced, from the next room, “Lagertha, my love, where are you?”

She left him. Athelstan lay bound and furious. They were fucking and he could not control his erection. He squeezed his legs together, thought of Christ’s agony on the cross, but that just made him think of Lagertha scratching at his back to check his wounds and he moaned with his mouth closed.  He could not touch himself – would not. Would not. Would not roll over to rut against the bed, and so he lay there sweating and biting his lip, listening to the slap of skin on skin. When at last he slept it was to fall into a dream so full of sin that he woke up afore cock-crow, stiff and breathless.

 Lagertha came in before sunup and sat on him again. Her hands worked at the knots. “Did you talk to your god?” she asked brightly.

He hated her.

He hated her the next night, too, when she wound the rope around his wrists and patted him on the belly. He thought of Samson bound and squirmed. She lay down next to him, stroked his back.

“Why are you so angry, priest?”

“Guess.”

She sighed into his neck, petted his shoulder. “Oh, priest. What would you be doing if I untied you?”

He had almost forgotten the word in Norse and it took him some minutes to find it. “I would be doing penance.”

“That’s what you do to when you talk to the gods? What could you possibly have to repent for, priest?” She mussed his hair. “You are kind. My children love you.”

He curled up, unwilling to look at her.

Lagertha made him tip his head up, made him look at her face, at her kind-wicked eyes. “Your sin is so small you can’t name it. It’s not a sin at all.”

“I can name it,” he whispered.

“Tell me what it is and I’ll untie you.”

His blush burned him. “I desire.”

“You desire?” She cocked her head, palmed her breast. “You desire this?”

“I – ”

“And you desire my husband,” she said, pleased.

He blushed hot and fierce and she laughed and stroked his face. “Desire all you want, priest. Come to our bed or not. It’s not worth beating yourself for.” She sat up. True to her word she undid the ropes around his wrists and he wanted to thank her but for the hot ugly shame creeping up his chest. Instead he turned on his side and commenced to pray. _Paternoster qui es in caelis –_

“Priest.” Lagertha had her hand on his back, playing over where he might have had scars. “Is there a greater sin than desiring?”

“Acting.”

“So are you preventing yourself from acting, or punishing yourself for desiring?”

“Does it matter?”

“Not tonight, I suppose.” She kissed him on the cheek and got up. Her eyes fell on his hands; she had bandaged them the night before, before lashing his wrists together. “Keep those on, priest. I shall be checking.”

Athelstan listened to her walk away, to the creak as she got into bed. A while later and he heard Ragnar come in. They did not rut, far as he could tell (was he, perhaps, straining to hear?) and he fell asleep rubbing his wrists.

Next morning went as it always did, him doing chores while the children tumbled around breaking things. Afternoon wore on all the same. He sat at the table with his Bible and opened it at random. _Dilectus meus mihi et ego illi qui pascitur inter lilia._ My beloved is mine and I am his, he who feeds among the lilies. Not particularly helpful. He flipped the page.

Ragnar came in; he had been playing with the children early in the morning and had a flower still stuck behind his ear. He poured himself a mug of ale and sat at the table across from Athelstan. His eyes were blue as the sky and Athelstan ground his teeth against the sudden rush of blood to his face. He flipped the page again, pretended to read. _De osculer et iam me nemo despiciat._ I would kiss you, and no one would despise me.

“Hello, priest,” Ragnar said. Athelstan could hear him smirking. “Good night last night?” 

“I slept well, thank you.”

 “So my wife tells me.”

 God damn them both. Athelstan tried to concentrate on the book. The words swam in front of his eyes.

 Ragnar put a whip on the table.

 Time froze, or so it seemed. Athelstan wanted to grind his fingers into his palms but could not. Ragnar looked at him like Lagertha would look at him, head cocked, eyes wicked and kind at the same time, lips slightly parted. He took the flower from behind his ear and twirled it in his fingers.

 “I don’t understand you, priest,” he said, and twirled the flower again before setting it back behind his ear. “My wife thinks you’re talking to the gods but then she tells me you’re merely warding off your desires. We’ve already _asked_ to share your desires with us, and yet you falter. From what I can tell, you will always be unhappy as long as you do not have this.” He tapped the whip. It was small, many-thonged, the stitching on the grip ragged and hurried; someone without a good knowledge of leather had made it out of scraps. They had tipped the thongs. “And yet you will always be unhappy if you don’t fall in to your desires. So.” He stood up. He came around to Athelstan’s side of the table, embraced him from behind. Athelstan squirmed against him. “Why not have both?”

 Athelstan stared at the whip, unseeing; Ragnar was running his hands up and dwon his back, touching him with light touches. The Bible lay open in front of him.

 "Priest?” Ragnar was running his fingernails at the edge of Athelstan’s jaw. “Do you have an answer for me?”

 “Oh Christ,” Athelstan said without hearing himself. He could not move, could not think. He could feel Ragnar’s half-erection pressing at his back. The whip’s leather was warm under his hands. He took in a ragged breath.

 “Well?”

 “Yes,” he whispered.

Ragnar picked him up. Picked him up, picked up the whip, carried him calmly to the bedroom. Set him on the edge of the bed and towered over him like a god. He stroked Athelstan’s forehead and knelt to press his lips against Athelstan’s mouth. Athelstan, hungry and wanting, kissed him back, and Ragnar laughed into his mouth, Ragnar took his face in his hands and pressed their foreheads together.

 “All right?” he asked, as if it needed asking, and shucked off Athelstan’s tunic at the shoulder. He fanned his hands over the places Lagertha had pronounced as healed and Athelstan moaned against his neck. He felt drunk, awash in a sea of fire, mad and broken. He felt like Ragnar could break him apart, desperate and powerless and good.

 Lagertha walked in.

 Ragnar stepped back, but he was smiling, and he was still smiling when he handed off the whip to Lagertha, and Athelstan had not time to breathe before she came over and kissed him, harsher than Ragnar. She nipped at his lip, stroked his hair.

 “Do you need to talk to your god, priest?”

 “You’re going to kill me,” Athelstan said. A mix of dread and lust had brewed in his veins and he was warm with it. Ragnar had undone the laces of his pants and stood there with his hand around his cock, not moving, just waiting, it seemed, for his indomitable wife to do _something._ “The both of you, for my sins.”

 Lagertha sighed. “You haven’t sinned, priest.”

 “Yet,” Ragnar offered, and Lagertha laughed. Her hands as soft as clouds on Athelstan’s back and the light frightening touch of the whip as she stroked it across his shoulders. The bed creaked as she got on it. He shivered and Ragnar knelt in front of him. Licked his belly, pushed his thighs apart.

 The first blow came just as Ragnar took him into his mouth and Athelstan did not scream, exactly, but his hands balled up into fists and he gasped. Lagertha pushed him up on his trembling feet, so he was deep in Ragnar’s mouth and on his toes. Ragnar hummed, made obscene noises, and the second _crack_ struck a fire-red bolt through his mind. Lagertha pushed them both forward; Ragnar backed up, for a moment, pulled him forward, pulled him far enough forward so Lagertha could stand between him and the bed, and then took him back in his mouth, grinning so hard Athelstan could feel it. Lagertha pushed herself against his back, moved his hands down so that he felt her wetness, and then she stepped back and this time the blow came so hard that he bucked forward into Ragnar’s mouth. The pain seared through him like lightning and gathered low in his belly, met at Ragnar’s lips. He cried out at last, grabbed Ragnar’s shoulders for something to hold on to.

 Absolve me, he thought wildly, his nails digging into Ragnar’s flesh. Forgive me. Forgive me.

 Another blow came and he was forgiven. Ragnar dropped his mouth from Athelstan’s hardness, held his legs open as he sobbed and laughed. This blow, or was it that, split his skin apart just under his shoulderblade and the new pain, the sharp pain of drawn blood, brought him up on his toes again. Lagertha kissed up his neck and Ragnar took Athelstan’s cock in his hand, stroking it roughly.

 “Come on, priest,” he said against Athelstan’s thigh, “come on, lovely one…”

 One last crack of the whip and he fell apart. Fell onto his knees. Fell into Ragnar’s hands and sobbed out his prayer onto Ragnar’s golden skin. The rush of heat to his belly was nothing compared to the white-hot burn of his soul, cleansed as it was of endless desire. Lagertha behind him wrapped his arms around him and cooed Norse words into his ear, words he could no longer understand. Ragnar held him, held his trembling body, did the same.

He could not resist being picked up and planted facedown in the big bed. Ragnar lay down beside him, flat on his belly, and rubbed his neck. Lagertha left and came back a moment later with a clump of cloth and a bowl of warm water. She swabbed at his skin and he did not hiss at the sting. Did not, could not. He closed his eyes and Ragnar stroked his arm.

“I thought you said you didn’t want me to hurt myself,” he murmured, after a while.

“I said nothing about me hurting you.”

Ragnar snickered. Athelstan heard the rope before he felt it. She had him trussed tight before he could rouse himself to resist.

“So you don’t scratch,” she said, and smiled her wicked smile. 

He was nudged to one side of the bed like a rag doll and watched in fascination as Lagertha climbed on top of Ragnar and made him hers. His cock twitched but did not rise. Afterwards they slung their arms across their bandaged back and curled against them, their wetness against his thighs.

“You’re mad,” he told them, drowsily. “Both of you.”

“You’re the one talking to the gods,” Lagertha said.

“ _Deosculer et iam me nemo despiciat,_ ” Athelstan said.

“What?”

“God talking to me,” Athelstan said, and fell asleep with his head against his hands.

**Author's Note:**

> Athelstan's verses are from the Song of Solomon.


End file.
